MORT UNPLUGGED: From Tuscany to Tucson, the Time Is Now By Mort Rosenblum TREQUANDA, Italy - From behind a glass of lovely Brunello red in the timeless Tuscan hills, my impending launch of a save-the-world book seems pretty ludicrous: a pasta-sated Quixote hones his lance on a pencil sharpener. But if Darfur is a universe away, a glance in any direction suggests we had better face reality - and damn soon. For instance, black spots on olives ripening nearby mean the dreaded dacus, a little fruit fly once rare in these hills far from the sea, might devastate the crop just as it did on my own farm in southern France, elsewhere along the Mediterranean, and in parts of California. The olive fly loves climate change. Pests are only part of it. Rains come erratically now, too much or too little and usually at the wrong time. For trees that evolved their habits over thousands of years, this is all too confusing. As underground streams go dry, Jean de Florette is grim reality. The world may soon face a tragic shortfall in extra virgin oil. On culinary grounds, this is a calamity enough. But an old Tucson pal, a biochemist named Binx Selby, has shown with medical trials in Colorado what people around here have known instinctively for millennia. A diet heavy in olive oil can rebalance blood chemistry to prevent, and reverse, killer diseases. We need to understand these things. If we do not look hard at what is already dead obvious, if we don't use our votes and our voices to try to do the right thing, we are guilty of misdemeanors against humanity. A pile of newspapers next to the jam jar adds dimension to the interwoven crises we all face. La Repubblica twinned two stories under a single banner: "Pane e pasta, aumenti record." The main piece says grain prices in Italy have spiked up 50 percent, triggering strikes and public protest. A sidebar notes skyrocketing fuel prices give yet more power to a new Russia with troubling similarities to an old evil empire over which we once crowed permanent victory. World grain supplies fall steadily behind a growing demand. Yet we divert ever greater amounts of what we grow into gas tanks and generators so we can squander energy at a rising pace. We desperately need Russian petroleum. A typical Italian family spends 600 dollars a month on food, La Repubblica said. Only 19 percent of that goes to farmers. Middlemen take 51 percent. And 30 percent goes to multinational agribusiness. Because of this, small producers sell out to big companies which pump chemicals into water supplies and replace natural crops with Frankenfood. Beyond biology, this reshapes society. The International Herald Tribune put this in a different context. Governments of the 16 nations that spend euros are tired of enabling Americans' acquisitive life styles, with their deficit nearing $1 trillion. This threatens a dollar collapse, with all the political-economics consequences that would follow. Back home, we ask why "they" hate us. Most of "them" don't, certainly not in Italy and the European Union beyond. People are simply weary of listening to our moralizing lectures while carrying our weight. Just beyond the Tuscan hills, crumbling old stones in Rome suggest what happens when the most powerful of empires fails to inspire. I called my book Escaping Plato's Cave, evoking the metaphor of a thinker who predates the Romans. Plato imagined prisoners in a cave, backs to its opening, who saw reality as shadows reflected off a wall. Today, far too many of us still see the world that way. I came here because a friend organized awards for women in various fields. One was Frances Mayes, whose popular poetic vignettes framed clear images of life under the Tuscan sun for millions of Americans. When Mayes read her speech, stumbling over simple words and mangling pronunciation, Italians around me looked at each other in disbelief. As one told me later, they had not realized that the woman who translated their reality for so many Americans barely spoke Italian, let alone the local argot in which most home truths are told. Mayes' idyll and her experience therein might make for good reading. But no single source can give a full picture of any culture or society. We need to work harder at understanding how new phenomena are remaking our world. We desperately need more seasoned reporters to see these small signs and connect the dots to warn us of their greater meaning. But a hammered "media" industry, dominated by business minds that see little value in such costly coverage, is headed in the opposite direction. These complexly interrelated crises are a lot to ponder on a sunny Tuscan morning. And this explains why so many of us choose not to not address them - or even admit to their existence. We are busy doing more pleasant things. Who needs an open an ugly can of worms? But even a short view is troubling enough. New rain patterns mean this year's white truffles might approach $2,500 a kilo. For anyone who reveres buttery tagliolini con tartufi bianchi, that is reason enough to fret. We must escape the cave. Unless we understand what we are up against, and with whom we share a planet, we will keep getting it wrong - and each time at higher cost.